What is Good Design?
Last Saturday, I was invited to be on a panel discussion about women in ICT careers for a group of teenaged girls aspiring for future STEM jobs, as part of an International Girls in ICT Day program. I was asked to discuss my work as a web developer and entrepreneur. Following the discussion, I spent a couple of hours showing the girls some tricks to designing a website.
I posed a question to the girls: “What is good design.” Most of them thought I was talking about the aesthetics of a website. I then told them that my definition of good design is a system that creates a solution to a problem efficiently and creatively. Yes, it is important to have a nice-looking website and that is what attracts most users initially, but website functionality is what makes users want to stay and come back to a website.
Here is what I think good website design should be:
- Easy for the user to understand
- Advocates for the user and commercially successfully
- Needs to understand the business side and supports the brand
- Knowing how to work in a collaborative manner and be able to communicate design concepts
- Showing skills that help a designer stand out from the crowd
- Showcasing cutting edge and futuristic design concepts
Good design concepts work in many different industries beyond web development. Creators of products and services are always thinking about what makes good design. Who better than Steve Jobs and Jonathan Ive to explain how good design works in industrial production!